Plaxo Goofs Off

Here are pictures of members of the Plaxo team caught having fun with Gorilla Bags, an industrial sized bean bag chair. Each one retails at $300.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has raised $24.3 million since its 2001 inception from such investors as Sequoia Capital, Cisco Systems, Globespan Capital Partners, JAFCO and DAG Ventures.

Plaxo has been reworking its offering and trying to reshape its public image. The first version of its software could be used to spam everyone in a person’s digital rolodex to ensure their contact information was correct. The startup throttled back this user ability to send out “acquaintance spam” through 2005, but found it was still laboring under a negative public perception. Golub posted an apology on the company’s website in March 2006: “To everyone who hated getting Plaxo update messages, felt we were generating acquaintance spam, or otherwise were harmed by the service, I personally apologize on behalf of all of the people at Plaxo.”

The apology was generally well received by the blogosphere. Michael Arrington, author of the influential TechCrunch weblog wrote, “I’m surprised and happy to see this,” and even said he’d consider joining the service.

“Obviously not everyone accepted the apology and many people questioned our motives,” Golub says. “Then my wife said how come you don’t apologize about the stuff you do around the house, like not cleaning out the gutters before winter?”